Most television viewers now receive their television signals through a content aggregator such as a cable or satellite television provider. In the typical instance, encoded television signals are sent via a cable or wireless data link to the viewer's home, where the signals are ultimately decoded in a set-top box (STB) or other computing system. The decoded signals can then be viewed on a television or other appropriate display as desired by the viewer.
More recently, STBs and other computing systems have become more advanced, and now provide more features than were previously available. Many STBs, for example, now provide personal video recorder (PVR) functionality whereby programs contained within received signals are stored on a disk drive or other storage medium for later viewing. With the advent of PVR and other advanced features, many computing devices used in video processing now include hard disk or other data storage devices to increase the capability to store video and other content for subsequent enjoyment.
While the addition of mass storage to STBs and other computing systems can greatly improve the convenience and functionality for the customer, this new capability often comes with new engineering and operations issues. Access times for disk reads and writes, for example, can be relatively slow in comparison to reads and writes to memory, which in turn can affect the responsiveness or other performance of the system. Moreover, in the event of a sudden power-off or other unpredictable event, the data on the disk or other storage device can become corrupt or otherwise difficult to use. While various file management systems have been attempted with varying levels of success, there nevertheless remains a desire to increase efficiency and robustness of file management.
It is therefore desirable to create systems and processes for managing files in a set-top box or other computing system. These and other desirable features and characteristics will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and this background section.